May 2026
Building certainty before we break ground
Jonathan Cartledge, Chief Executive Officer, Consult Australia
At the Consult Australia Large Firms Forum from left to right:
Engineers Australia CEO Romilly Madew AO and National President and Board Chair Tom Goerke, with Consult Australia President Natalie Muir and CEO Jonathan Cartledge.
Infrastructure projects are never just lines in a Budget paper. Long before they break ground, communities prepare, supply chains invest and businesses involved in design and delivery make decisions based on what governments say is coming next.
So, when major projects stall, shrink or disappear, the impacts land with Consult Australia members.
This month’s Federal Budget committed another $12.1 billion to infrastructure projects, while confirming Inland Rail would be scaled back after costs climbed beyond $45 billion.
The headlines focused on what was cut. But too often what is described as a “delivery failure” is really a planning failure.
Our new report, Protecting Cost Certainty, developed with WT, makes this clear. Scope uncertainty, unrealistic assumptions and poorly allocated risk compound over time until projects become increasingly difficult to deliver within budget.
At this month’s Large Firms Forum, more than 20 leaders spoke frankly about the challenge of investing in people, technology and capability when the forward pipeline keeps shifting. Firms cannot build specialist teams or regional capacity on stop-start signals.
We were pleased Engineers Australia Chief Executive Officer Romilly Madew AO and National President and Board Chair Tom Goerke could join us at the Large Firms Forum. It has been two years since we signed our collaboration agreement, Leading through collaboration. Since then, we’ve led industry campaigns, launched the Parliamentary Friends of Engineering and made significant headway on what we call “long-haul advocacy”.
National registration for engineers is a prime example. In December we wrote to Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers calling for this high-impact reform. Across Consult Australia’s membership, we estimate more than $54 million is tied up in duplicated registration costs caused by inconsistent state systems.
The Treasurer has listened, and among measures outlined in the Budget has promised to progress national occupational licencing.
Discussions at our Large Firms Forum reinforced how quickly the engineering profession is changing. As artificial intelligence, cyber risk and digital capability reshape the way firms operate, every dollar tied up in duplicated state licensing is a dollar not invested in building future skills.
Supporting our members as they prepare for the future requires accurate signals, which is why I encourage all Consult Australia members to complete our Market Conditions Survey. The data feeds directly into Infrastructure Australia’s Market Capacity Report, briefings to iBodies and delivery agencies, and is a reference point for policy.
If there is one thread running through this Budget and the conversations I’ve had this month, it is this: announcing projects is the easy part. Building the conditions to deliver them – certainty, capability and collaboration – is where the real work sits. And this is the work we are focused on.